A couple of years ago I stated here that the average die life for Denver Mint Buffalo nickels in 1918 was 200,000 coins. I've just received some documents via email from Roger Burdette that indicates that the number is more like 63,000. Now that's the AVERAGE die life. I'm trying to get an estimate of the number of 1918-D 8/7 coins may have been originally struck. I've seen some pretty late die state coins (near terminal) so I'd bet that the number was close to 100,000 struck of this variety. Not very many were saved, tho, as the issue is quite rare in Mint state.

Average die life varies depending on the denomination and the time period. In the early 1960's the average die life for five cent pieces was about 300,000, today it is over 500,000. For the Shield nickel it varied from under 15,000 in the early years to around 28,000 by the end of the series. For one cent pieces they were around 200,000 in the late 19th century and they are over 1.5 million today. Most 19th century coins had average die life of around 150,000 to 200,000. (Which leads us trying to explain why some low mintage coins come from three or four die pairs, and why something like the 1877 cent comes from a single die pair with a mintage over 800,000.)

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